News Detail

Icebreaking season commences in Great Lakes, Northeast

The Coast Guard set its annual icebreaking programs into motion for the Great Lakes and Northeast ports, days after the season’s first outbreak of Arctic cold spread snow showers as far south as Texas and Louisiana.

On Dec. 16 the Coast Guard opened Operation Taconite, the annual program named for the iron ore shipped on the western Great Lakes.

The 225’x46’13’ cutter Alder is assigned to the ports of Duluth, Minn., and Superior, Wisc., and will also provide icebreaking to Thunder Bay, Ontario. The 140’x37’6″x13′ cutter Biscayne Bay will keep the St. Mary’s River open.

In the Northeast, the Coast Guard First District based in Boston, Mass., coordinates Operation Reliable Energy for Northeast Winters (RENEW), an icebreaking operation named for the region’s heavy reliance on heating oil shipped by barge and tanker. Some 85% of U.S. heating oil is burned in the Northeast states and of that 90% arrives via barge, according to the Coast Guard.